Friday, July 18, 2008

Jim Gordon is Awesome

SPOILERS ABOUT BATMAN: THE NEWEST MOVIE

I'm still trying to process a lot of things about The Dark Knight, but one of the things that struck me most was how well it balanced all of the characters. It was promoted as being a movie about Batman, The Joker, and Harvey Dent. And it is, but it's also a movie about James Gordon. All four of those men have great arcs. None of them seems overused, and none of them gets the short end of the stick.

For me, though, Gordon is the heart of the movie. When we, the audience, believe Gordon to be dead, I was actually angry at the filmmakers and worried for him. True, I should have assumed that he'd be back (if only because he hadn't become Commissioner yet). But nothing seems impossible in the Bat-world that Christopher Nolan has created. He went out like a hero, and it would have been satisfying. The fact that he is faking his death (even fooling his wife and children) out of dedication to his job just underlines all the more what's great about Lt. Gordon - he will stop at nothing to do what's best for his city.

At the end, his basic heroism is underscored again when he agrees to help Batman paint himself as a villain for the good of Gotham. The last movie ended with Gordon creating the Bat-Signal, and this one ends with him destroying it - in both cases because it will help to clean up his city. Jim Gordon is the unsung hero of Nolan's Bat-series, and I can't wait to see where he goes from here.

You can read more adventures of Commissioner Gordon in the pages of DC Comics.

This will be the last post about Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon for a while, I swear.